1. Technical Field
Embodiments of the subject matter described in this specification relate generally to computer networks. Certain embodiments relate to techniques for providing routing information for routing packets to a destination node.
2. Background Art
In equal-cost multi-path (ECMP) routing techniques, multiple network paths to the same network node are identified as being associated with the same level of strategic cost (or value) in terms of route selection. Conventional ECMP techniques, such as those discussed in the Network Working Group's Request for Comments (RFC) 2991 (November, 2000) and RFC 2992 (November, 2000), are typically concerned with trying to send on each of the network paths identified as being of equal-cost the same amount of traffic to the destination node.
As data networks trend towards increased size, complexity and speed, mechanisms such as those for implementing ECMP are burdened with the increasingly difficult task of supporting sufficiently fast and efficient routing in such networks. For example, the number of entries in a routing table of a conventional router device tends to grow exponentially with an increasing number of utilized network paths and increasingly complex routing configurations in increasingly large-scale networks. Moreover, the overhead of managing and searching such a large routing table impacts router operations which are under increasingly time-constrained performance parameters.